[straube]

A local strong club pair plays this defense to strong club


dbl-good hand
1D-same color
1H-same rank
1S-natural
1N-same shape
2C-natural
2D-a single-suited major
2H-same color, better
2S-same rank, better
2N-same shape, better

I don't think this defense is very good. What do others think of it? How would you cope with their 2D bid?

[Fluffy]

double 1NT and 2D with 8+ balanced/looking for penalties, and go natural its simple and effective. A good start IMO.

Then you can throw in some upgades, you probably don't wanna give up penalties of 2M when you have 1 major and hand is a missfit, so bidding 2M over 2♦ might be conventional.

[dake50]

This CRASH modification runs afoul (ACBL)
of not having an 'anchor'(known) suit.
Whirlwind is similar but ACBL-GCC compliant.
. Much too much ambiguity handcuffing partner from
jumping to the 3-level where lost space just might
hamper 1C-strong sequences.

[straube]

They played it in a Midchart event, so presumably Midchart legal.

[Phil]

Its legal under GCC. I once toyed with playing one level crash bids but had poor results.

There was a thread a few weeks ago about strong club interference. If you were to read that you would come away thinking that this method is a very bad idea for multiple reasons.

[straube]

Phil, on 2012-May-19, 10:47, said:

Its legal under GCC. I once toyed with playing one level crash bids but had poor results.

There was a thread a few weeks ago about strong club interference. If you were to read that you would come away thinking that this method is a very bad idea for multiple reasons.

I agree about GCC. I read your thread, learned a lot, and also think their defense is poor. No way to introduce diamonds at the 1 or 2 level!

[mycroft]

Well, it's better than Cappelletti vs strong club.

CRASH/NT isn't legal (on the ACBL GCC), but CRASH/strong club is (CRASH/takeout double is, too, not that anyone would do that!) I play it (but in the more standard X/1♦/1NT C/RA/SH form, keeping 1M natural) with one partner, and don't have a problem with it.

I would *prefer* a system (as you can tell if you search my history) where I show real suits and not "one of two types", because I want partner to raise, hard if he can, and against the CRASH bids he has to have good fits in two suits (and not two of the "same" suits) to raise hard. But even getting to the two level, especially in a p/c auction, is a monkey wrench - so I'll give up the 3 level to get the ambiguity I guess.

double to show a good hand seems inferior to pass-and-bid or pass-and-see if they get in trouble or I have to bid, simply because a) it tells the strong club pair a lot, none of it really helpful to you, and b) it takes away a very useful call for a very unusual hand. The fact that this is the call that gives the strong club pair two extra calls would really be of use in the partscore fight or attempt to penalize that 1♣-X is likely to lead to, too.